18 December 2006

XPLANE is opening a European office. Quietly, last fall, we acquired a Madrid-based information firm called IdeaMaps. I am happy to say that in January I will be going to Madrid to formally launch the venture and train the IdeaMaps team in "the XPLANE way." Going forward, IdeaMaps will be known as XPLANE EU and will be serving XPLANE clients in Europe and neighboring regions.

There will be plenty more to come on this subject, I have no doubt. Meanwhile, if you are in Europe please leave a comment on this post and introduce yourself! I'll be looking forward to meeting you in person.

14 December 2006

Visual Thinking School (VTS) is a two-hour time slot that XPLANE sets aside each week, specifically for our teams to improve their visual thinking skills.

You can set up and run your own "DIY" version, either at work or at home. Here's how:

The trick is to remember that visual thinking is a holistic skill that involves training the eye, mind and body. The "XPLANE way" is evolving constantly -- most XPLANERs probably learn and try something new at least once a week.

You don't need to be an expert to run visual thinking workshops. Instead of thinking of yourself as a teacher, think of yourself as a learning director. Learning, as opposed to teaching, can be largely self-directed and is usually about a person trying to figure out a way to achieve a goal.

You don't need to be a teacher as much as a goal-setter. Once you have set learning objectives, you can have your team design learning activities themselves.

You could try rotating ownership of VTS to a different person each week.

Give the "VTS owner" a training goal and let them design the session. They can then make calls to subject-matter experts or do some research to fill in any gaps in their knowledge.

11 December 2006

When the Dutch East India Company was established in 1602, the impact on global trade was massive -- similar to the internet's impact on trade today. The art world was changed forever.

The emergence of international trade on a broad scale also set the stage for the rise of a merchant class, who used their new income to buy large houses. They covered the walls of their new homes with art, and in so doing unleashed one of the biggest revolutions in art history.

Prior to this time, most artwork had been commissioned by the rich -- that is, by monarchs or churches, and most subject matter was either religious in nature, or served to exalt royal figures and aristocratic ideals.

But in the Golden Age of Dutch painting, still lives and domestic scenes took their place as worthy subjects for art. Painters like Rembrandt and Vermeer created wonderful paintings of apples and pears, home and hearth, feasts and wine and beer.

Today a similar market revolution is underway; one that threatens to turn the art world on its head. Artists and art collectors can now connect directly with each other, no matter where they are in the world.

Personally, I have decided to start a new blog where I'll sell my paintings by eBay auction, starting at 99 cents. The idea is to let the market decide, and let the market for my paintings evolve over time. If you're interested I hope you'll subscribe.

I am also excited to see how the paintings take on a life of their own, and hope collectors will share photos of how they chose to display the artwork in their personal environment.

21 November 2006

I really like this quote from Carol Righi. You know it strikes me as interesting that when businesses want to see more innovation, they talk about creativity. They hold workshops on how to be creative. But when you talk to most creative people -- like artists, inventors, and yes, bloggers -- they don't talk about creativity, they talk about process.

I share Carol's belief that our processes and practices are the primary drivers of real creative endeavors. It's like the zen buddhist said, "Stop searching for God and just sit!"

20 November 2006

Update: The page has been deleted based on the opinion of Wikipedia editors that the company is not notable enough. There were dissenting opinions. You can read the discussion at the articles marked for deletion page -- but please don't edit the page as the discussion has been closed. I have put the article up for deletion review, which means a larger pool of editors reviews the decision to delete.

However, anyone who believes differently is always free to write a new article about XPLANE. Be aware that any article must cite evidence of notability, such as multiple, independent, reliable sources, writing about XPLANE in some significant way. If anyone is interested I will be happy to supply such references.

Robb Lucy, of www.eyelearner.com, shared the following article with me. I hope you enjoy it:

Here’s my theory: everyone’s got a story, and some of them are damned interesting. But why are we hiding them? Or is it just that we don’t know how to share them? In a very wired world with communication technology capable of so much, why do we stink at connecting with one another? Are we afraid?

A story. We just got back from a short cruise. We’ve done lots of cruises since the early 80’s, and my favourite time has always been dinner. I loved getting to know some fascinating people and learning from their different, and rich, experiences.

But now there’s a new trend in cruising, and I think it’s a sample of our unconnectedworld. You’re not assigned a table anymore, ‘forcing’ you to eat with, and get to know, ‘strangers’. You can eat anywhere you want, at any time. Eat by yourselves or with people you know every night.

I think it’s a huge opportunity lost. Here’s why.

One year we sailed out of Naples, Italy. We got on the ship a couple of hours before sailing and wandered the decks looking at, and sizing up, the passengers. I took note of one couple; she was short, heavy, dressed in black, very Italian. Her husband was from central casting; white hair, suit, and following behind her.

Dinner time, 8pm. We walked into the large dining room looking for table 41. And there she was. Well, not much conversation with them I thought, knowing they were quite Italian. Beside them were a pleasant looking couple, also about 25 years older than us, probably American.

It turned out she was a superior court judge in New York State, and she knew everybody. He was the best joke-teller I’ve ever encountered. The other couple were travelling the world, she recovering from breast cancer. We told stories, laughed and cried every night. Our table was the first to fill, and the last to leave. We connected with each other and it enriched us.

It happened again on a ship through the Panama. We walked up to our table and it was a sea of white hair, average age 75+, but fascinating people, every one. America’s leading sociology textbook writer for colleges. An 85 yr. old firecracker who had nursed in 25 countries. A 45-year teacher in a one-room school who travelled to a different country every summer. Every subject resulted in animated conversation. We left the ship for a few days and brought them back gifts from Machu Pichu. They cried, and the picture of all of us is still on our kitchen wall.

Yes, travelling is a great way to connect to new people, but why don’t we do it all the time? Are we afraid to be open and tell our stories? Afraid to offend by asking for their stories? Don’t want to enter someone’s space? I’ll bet if you talk to a hundred people, a high percentage will be proud of their family, their accomplishments, their experiences & dreams. And they'd probably like to tell them, but they don't know how and they don’t feel safe.

A good conversationalist just knows how to ask questions. CBC Radio’s Barbara Frum was the best, and all of us can learn something from her. Open-ended questions find out what’s important to the person you’re talking to. Barbara often just said: “tell me about…” and the game was on!

When you’re next on a plane, a ship, or waiting for a bus, open up a conversation with a few non-threatening questions. Tell me about your work? What’s the most fun you have with your family? If you could do one thing tomorrow, what would it be? And have your stories ready so this isn’t just an interview. The worse that will happen is they don't want to participate, and your antennae will let you know. The best is you make a new friend. You will walk away feeling enriched. They will tell their friends and family they met an interesting person... and a new friend.

Successful business people know this works. They build a connection, a relationship, and business builds as a result.

And connecting isn’t just a rich experience with people you don’t know. Good conversations help existing friendships grow much deeper.

Four us spent a recent New Year’s weekend at beautiful seaside lodge. We decided to learn more about each other by answering questions in the past, present & future. We answered questions like “A book that affected me?”, “A person that affected me?”, “A skill I will learn?”, and “An experience I will have?”. The result was deeper friendships with people we knew more about.

Everyone’s got a story, and feeling connected to more people, and ourselves, means listening to and telling those stories. Doesn’t the popularity of devices that help us ‘communicate’, like cel phones & Blackberries, show a yearning to stay connected?

Problem is, we are less connected to each other. But if we just take the risk to tell about ourselves, and carefully listen to their stories, that will change.

11 November 2006

More and more people in the "real world" have been asking me about blogging. "What's the big deal?" they say. I talk to them about how conversations are unfolding online. "So what?" they reply. After awhile, I realized that the best way to explain blogging is to talk about the horizontal city.

The horizontal city is an idea based on some of Tom Friedman's ideas, presented in The World is Flat. I tell people that the internet is like a city that slices through the world horizontally. Anyone with internet access can visit the horizontal city -- and every time you visit a website or go online you are visiting.

But if you don't have a blog or some similar internet presence you are a tourist -- you don't live there and you don't enjoy the same benefits as the people who do. As far as the citizens of the horizontal city are concerned, you're invisible.

When you set up a blog, you are moving into the horizontal city. You are putting yourself -- your passions, your ideas, your beliefs -- online, and by doing so you make yourself linkable. People can see you. They can point to you. They can talk to you. You're a citizen.

At first it's just like moving into a new city in the real world. It's lonely. You don't know anyone. Nobody talks to you. But after awhile -- just like in a real-world city -- you start meeting people and having conversations. You leave a comment on someone's blog, or you link to one of their posts. Then they come to your blog to see who you are. The momentum builds and before you know it you are a member of a community -- maybe several communities.

It's like moving to a city in other ways, too. Putting yourself online is not without risk. You're more vulnerable -- to criminals, stalkers and the merely boring. But it's no different than a real city: you take on more risk but you also enter a thriving metropolis, bursting with opportunity and ideas.

Sometimes people say, "So what? I already live in a city. What's so great about the horizontal city?"

My reply is this: As Dave Weinberger has pointed out, the web runs on our collective passion. When you put yourself online and make yourself linkable you are making your passions explicit, linkable and clickable. Because of this, the people who find you and point to you tend to share your passions.

On the web, your "hit rate" of interesting people is much, much higher than it is in the real world. How often in the real world do you meet people who truly fascinate you? If it's more than 10 percent of the people you meet, I'd say you are very lucky.

But on the web, your "hit rate" is much higher. I have been blogging only a year, and already, quite a few people whom I have met online have become offline (real-world) friends. And almost without exception, they are fascinating, passionate people who are fun to talk to and energizing to spend time with.

And that (I say to my non-blogging friends) is why blogging is a big deal.

18 September 2006

This is an assignment for students in the information design program at Bradley University. But anyone else is welcome to try it as well.

Your assignment is to read and synthesize two articles by Kevin Kelly, and create visual communication materials that clearly and visually communicate the key concepts in a visual form. There are two products that you will create for this assignment:

1. A 24-inch by 36-inch poster designed to be hung on the wall. This poster should not require anyone to explain it -- it should fully explain itself, including why you should read it.

2. A brief PowerPoint presentation that can be delivered in 5 minutes or less. This is designed to be presented by a speaker. In fact, you will present it and your presentation will be part of your grade.

I am in San Diego for a couple of days for a board meeting. If you are nearby and want to hook up you can text message me at +1-314-496-6129 and I will reply with my location -- if I can figure out where I am!

14 September 2006

We have an opening for a Senior Information Designer at XPLANE. If you're qualified and interested I encourage you to apply. Here's some more information on the opening:

XPLANE is a global leader in visual communication and we are looking a Senior Information Designer to join our creative team. You will work with top managers from Fortune 500 companies around the world to creatively visualize complex processes and technologies.

Qualified candidates will demonstrate skills in visual communication, process mapping, creative direction, people management and business technology. We will also be looking for strong organizational and interpersonal skills.

09 September 2006

There were some beautiful skies in Toronto yesterday. The light reminded me of paintings by Spanish realist AntonioLopez.

If you happen to live in or near Toronto I will be here all weekend (Sept. 9-10, 2006) and want to socialize a bit and enjoy the city. If you'd like to connect text message me at +1-314-496-6129 and I will reply with my location.

28 August 2006

A while back I asked if any of you would be interested in workshops. Well thanks to your feedback, I am giving a 3-hour visual thinking workshop in Toronto on September 8, 2006. The title of the workshop will be "The Power of Pictonics: Using Visualizations to Tell Your Technology Story."

I am really looking forward to this.

There will be plenty of hands-on exercises to help you hone your visual thinking and storytelling skills. You'll also learn some of the "secret sauce" that goes into making visual explanations.

This will be a pretty special event, to be held in the beautiful and hi-tech MaRS convergence and innovation center in the downtown Discovery District. It also happens to coincide with the Toronto film festival, one of the best film festivals in North America in my opinion. So if you've been meaning to visit Toronto you couldn't pick a better time.

27 August 2006

"Here you can study various experiments and variations and the gradual change from bands to balloons. Even the later examples sometimes have tiny leftovers of the 'bands' on the other side of the balloon."

Seventeen years ago, Paul Middlewick was on his way to work when he noticed an elephant staring at him from the London Underground map. Since then he has discovered birds, whales, and emu and even a wombat, not to mention the fish shown here.

13 August 2006

"Unreasonable requests are big requests that you are generally too chicken to make. Outrageous requests make great things happen. A well formulated request, when accepted by the person you ask, can reroute your progress and enable you to zoom to success.

Unreasonable requests that are turned down can also serve as important catalysts because often a compromise solution is offered that is still higher than you would have normally expected. Mahatma Gandhi said, “If you don’t ask, you don’t get,” and I believe this to be true."

07 August 2006

This video thing is definitely the wave of the future. There used to be financial barriers to this kind of thing. Publishing is rapidly becoming the province of everyone who has a computer and internet access. The walls continue to crumble.

Steve Smith is a local blogger and entrepreneur here in St. Louis. Last week he took me on a drive and since I wanted an excuse to learn about iMovie I decided to videoblog the experience. If you live in or are interested in St. Louis Steve is a fascinating character. Check out his blog for more.

31 July 2006

KAYO books in San Francisco has discovered a wonderful way to make a very ordinary storefront feel lively and inviting. A lot of good thinking and a little work makes the store stand out on a street where a lot of signs compete for your attention. The design works because the designer decided to stand out by thinking orthogonally.

Are you designing anything? If so, take a moment to think of a really simple way to make your design stand out from the pack. Is there a way your design can be "orthogonal" to its competitors?

12 July 2006

I just had dinner with Evan Williams and his lovely fiance Sara Morishige. Somewhere between the kalua pig and the bannana bread pudding, Evan gave me a hot scoop: his company, Odeo is about to launch a new service called twttr. It's pronounced "twitter" and you can find it at http://twttr.com (If you're less hip and more literal, like me, you can also find it at http://twitter.com).

The idea is that you can keep your friends informed of where you are and what you're doing by text-messaging them from your mobile phone. If you think about it it's a pretty cool idea: You can subscribe to text messages from your friends and they can "blog" their wheareabouts and doings. So, for example, if you're going to be in a certain city, or a certain coffee shop, or a certain club -- you can text message all your friends in one go, for example: "I'm going to the Starbucks at Market and Polk. Meet me if you want to play Scrabble."

People will get your text message immediately no matter where they are -- it's more immediate than a blog or email, and if they happen to be nearby, you haven't missed an opportunity to hook up.

25 May 2006

Why, when you see the laptop come out and the lights start to dim, do you feel a vague sense of dread?

Maybe it isn't so vague?

Maybe you've become used to a different way of interacting; a different kind of media. Social media.

What is social media? I think of it as a group of media producers that is primarily it's own audience.

I was first introduced to this idea by Alex Vieux of Red Herring, who defined the Red Herring media ecosystem as a global social network of entrepreneurs, technologists, and financiers who were primarily interested in each others' activities and ideas.

A short while later I sat next to Ross Mayfield of Socialtext, who for three days running attempted to convince me of the power of wikis -- I am sad to say, without success. Those of you who know me are aware that I can be quite slow on the uptake sometimes.

You wouldn't be reading this if you weren't already connecting to the world of social media. Which is why, I submit, that meetings of the traditional type don't work for you any more. You're no longer a couch potato, watching TV in the evening, being spoon-fed your media. And you don't want that role in your business meetings either.

You've become a part of the social media ecosystem. In addition to being a consumer of media, you're now also a producer. You've become accustomed to having a voice in the conversation. Social media is a clear phenomenon and it isn't going away.

So you can imagine my surprise when I searched the web for a simple, clear definition of social media and came up empty.

23 May 2006

As you may know I recently attended Meshforum 2006 in San Francisco. It was a wonderful event -- I took a lot of photos, and copious notes on index cards.

A few people joined the event late and asked what they had missed. Instead of trying to explain it I was able to hand them a stack of index-card notes. The notes gave me a way to share personal impressions of the event without losing my focus on what was currently happening.

I have taken photographs of the events and put them alongside the index-card notes, in roughly chronological order. Looking at the photos and notes in sequence may give you a feeling for a personal experience of the event -- I hope you enjoy it. Take a look.

22 May 2006

It all started when Peter and a friend (Russell) went to lunch with pens, paper, books, folders and a whole heap of Lego blocks. Each block represented a function or layer of code. They got a few odd stares, but ended up with a set of building blocks that they thought could solve the problem.

Lego blocks allowed Peter and Russel to clearly visualize what they were trying to do. Think of it as three-dimensional sketching for object-oriented programming.

Assemble a whole lot of modules that can be plugged together to accomplish something.

Peter and Russell were inspired by SAP, the global enterprise software company. Over time, SAP has compiled a tightly integrated grid of modules which can be plugged together in various ways to build solutions.

Here's Peter on how they do it:

"There's no special meaning to the choice of colour or size of blocks, aside from the fact that we join the blocks together to see, and, more importantly, think, how they can come together. Each block or module is uncoupled. That means it does one thing and one thing well.

This is the advantage of using blocks. Click them together to see what you need to acheive a particular task. Its not quite UML and we may miss something. But its cheap, and if used intelligently, does the job."

Click here to look at the annotated photo and read more thoughts from Peter.

16 May 2006

"Skepticism about the consumerist frenzy in the technology industries has led some practitioners to work with low-tech or outdated equipment, deliberately refusing the allure of commercial polish in favor of handmade aesthetics. Many of these self-styled creators deliberately turn to low-tech production platforms in order to make work that is accessible, inexpensive and often innovative in unexpected ways."Take a look.

The economy is changing. The environment is changing. The ways that we communicate and interact are changing. It feels like everything is in flux -- there is a monumental shift in the air.

I can sense it. Can you sense it too?

There is a huge gap between we measure the value of a company and the way the market values it. New models of work are emerging -- the idea of a company as an individual entity is evolving into the idea of a company as an ecosystem.

Would Dell be Dell without its sophisticated network of global suppliers and information systems? Would Wal-Mart be Wal-Mart?

And it goes without saying that companies like Google, eBay and Yahoo are emerging into dominance by finding new ways of defining and creating value.

More than 20 years ago, management visionary Peter Drucker wrote, "The economy is forever going to change and is biological rather than mechanistic in nature."

And yet there is still so much we don't know and have no way to measure.

Yi-Tan means conversations about change. On Monday, May 14th (that's tomorrow for those of you who are reading this on Sunday, or today if you're reading this on Monday), I will join Jerry Michalski on his weekly Yi-Tan call to discuss how visual thinking is changing the way interact and communicate.

The topic: how to build shared visual meaning inside a company. We'll discuss:

-- When is visualization especially useful? How is it changing org charts and other common tools?-- How do you engage work groups in visualization work?-- How might we create better shared visual memory? Better visual contexts we can return to over and over?

This is the second call in a series on shared visual meaning. The first one was a group dialogue and I was one of the guests on that one too. You can listen to that call as a podcast here.

We will use a free Web document-sharing service that includes chat capabilities.

At the start of the Yi-Tan call, please head to Vyew and join meeting number 568542. If you'd like to practice with it first, join us in that meeting a half hour before the call starts. Jerry and I will both be there.

Howard Greenstein is currently the Senior Director of the Center for Management at the School of Continuing and Professional Studies at NYU. In this role he is the administrator for 9 management-related programs including Coaching, Business Continuity, Project Management, and Human Resources.

Day three of meshforum was held in the offices of adaptive path, the company who coined the term AJAX for web applications. Their office is also the home of application development company Rubyredlabs. So I wasn't surprised to find ruby red AJAX in their kitchen.